Contents
All change for pensions
A waste of time & money
Tax credit mess
Fuel up (shock)
Gimme shelter
Gulp! SIPPS
Paper or plastic?
Re: Mortgages
Bank the cheque
Subs beware
VAT's the limit
Dividend end?
The buck stops
Sack with care
Selling up
A matter of trust
We're watching
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The Rolling Stones may have had a hit with this song, but it hasn't been a success for the big accountancy firm KPMG. According to criminal indictments served in the USA, the firm sold illegal tax shelters from 1996 to 2002 - crossing the thin line between tax avoidance, which works within the rules, and evasion, which breaks the law. The amounts of money involved are huge - billions of dollars earned by very high earning clients of the firm. This is a reminder that there is a borderline between what's acceptable and what isn't, and even an internationally-known business can get it wrong. The UK authorities are as keen as the Americans to police it, and it's well-known that they can disagree with accountants on where the line is. The use of offshore companies to shelter UK income is one area in which the Revenue have sent people to jail in recent years. KPMG have been banned from giving tax advice to high net worth individuals, and have to be monitored by the US government for three years. That's pretty extreme, but it doesn't go as far as what happened to the leading firm Arthur Andersen when they were convicted of destroying evidence that might have been used in the investigation of the Enron scandal. Andersen went from being a huge international business to nothing at all in a few months - and their conviction has recently been overturned in the US, suggesting that in the post-Enron atmosphere the trial of the firm was unfair. All this is a reminder that your professional advisers have to give you advice that is legal, and sometimes have to tell you that plans which you have read about, or heard about in the pub, or that "everyone is doing", really don't work at all. Or - they work until the Revenue find out! |
© Bayar Hughes & Co., 2010.